


little teal bow

by salazarastark



Category: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 20:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17049737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salazarastark/pseuds/salazarastark
Summary: The idea of a soulmate fills Lara Jean with both excitement and terror, and she doesn't know how she'll meet them. She never thought it would be through a fake dating scheme though.





	little teal bow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thistidalwave](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistidalwave/gifts).



> I must thank Truffula for all their amazing beta work!

Lara Jean is in eighth grade when she wakes up one day to an odd sensation on her shoulder. It’s not pain exactly, but it itches and burns, and she goes to scratch it immediately. As soon as she touches, an electric jolt is sent through her, making her jump a little.

There’s a growing feeling of excitement and terror in her as she gets up. She remembers sitting on her father’s lap and leaning against his chest, looking up at him as he told her and her sisters how he got his soulmark. (Though he never talks about how it’s faded and scarred now that her mother passed.) She devours all the romance novels she can, with all the different kinds of soulmates they offer (and the misunderstandings). The thought of having a soulmate of her own sends thrills down her body.

There isn’t much rhyme or reason behind how soulmarks happen. It’s believed that once the two or more people who belong to the bond make the decisions or do the thing that will lead them to meeting, the soulmark will appear, with the mark representing something that connects to the decisions. Her parent’s mark was a snowflake, because they met during a snowstorm that “we had both stupidly decide to go into because I had to have my root beer and your mother her Fritos, and of course we got stuck in the store.”

(“Neither one of you noticed that your soulmarks were coming in?” Margo asks, her nose scrunched up as she sits with her legs crossed in front of their father, not comprehending how one could not notice one of the biggest moments in their life.

“Well,” their father says bashfully, “we might have also both been hungover.”

“What’s hungover?” Kitty asks, as she leans against Margo.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” he says quickly.)

Lara Jean races off her bed and goes straight to her mirror, contorting her body to try and get a good look at it. She quickly decides that the best position requires her to crane her neck at an awkward angle that soon begins to hurt, but it’s worth it to watch the mark appear.

It’s a teal bow.

In her excitement to show her family, she forgets about the letter she had finished to Peter Kavinsky last night and put in her hatbox.

*

The first few weeks of Lara Jean getting her soulmark is exciting, but the excitement quickly wears off as it becomes clear that she isn’t going to meet her soulmate anytime soon. They might be on the path to meeting, but it seems like it’s going to be a long path.

Lara Jean still reads her romance novels, and she still falls in love, and she still hates the feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen.

She still manages to fall in love with Lucas and Josh, and she knows they would never happen. Lucas never gave any indication that he had a soulmark of a small teal bow, and Josh. . . .

She knew Josh didn’t. She knew that Josh never thought about her in that way because she had one. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to fall in love with him, or that it didn’t hurt when he and Margo got together.

In all the romance novels, falling in love with your soulmate is better than falling in love with anyone else, and the thought of that fills Lara Jean with terror.

If this is how bad it can feel with Josh, how bad will it feel when she meets her actual soulmate?

*

She knows why her mother told Margo to never go to college with a boyfriend. Mom went to college with a boyfriend and then met Dad, and there were issues. She was never told the details, but her father said the best thing a person could do is leave a relationship with the other person meets their soulmate. She knows that if Margo and Josh had been soulmates, there is no way they would have broken up, but unfortunately, they had to put their hearts in a shredder for something that might not even happen.

About a third of the world never gets a soulmark, and only a small group of people get a soulmark at such a young age. Lara Jean doesn’t see the logic of breaking up with Josh for a small chance that she’ll get her soulmark in college, rather than in grad school or in her thirties or in her forties or whatever.

When she carefully brings this up to Margo, all her sister does is look at her with cool eyes and simply says, “You really don’t realize how lucky you are.”

The words cut at Lara Jean, because she knows how lucky she is. As far as anyone knows, a person meets their soulmate within ten years of the mark appearing. There are no records of it taking longer, and Lara Jean lives her life knowing that it could happen at moment. Her clothes hide her mark, and she’s scared to wear the shoulder baring dresses and shirts in the spring and the summer that will help her soulmate see it and recognize it, but every boy that she meets, she scans every part of his body that she can see in a strange hope and fear that he’ll have the matching teal bow somewhere that she can see.

*

She isn’t sure why she  _ kisses _ Peter even though she was just telling him that she didn’t like him, but it was the only thing she could really think of to make Josh think she didn’t actually like him. 

It still mortifies her, and her conversation with Lucas only does a little to cheer her up. She still freaks out when later Peter shows up at her door, and runs away as fast she possibly can, risking internal injuries for it by climbing out her window and rolling off her roof.

Unfortunately, he still manages to track her down at the diner. It’s funny to see his reaction at finding out he’s not the only one who got a letter, and it’s sweet of him to drive her home. It’s definitely surprising when he suggests that they pretend to date so that Josh won’t think she likes him and that Genevieve will take him back.

When she reconsiders, knowing that her soulmate is still in the future and this whole Josh and Peter situation is today, she makes sure that the first thing she tells him when they’re alone is, “I have a soulmark.”

Peter shrugs. “Okay. So do I.”

That statement sends her reeling, but she ignores her feelings as she begins to lay down the rules. She makes sure that he knows she won’t kiss him again. “You’ve already had my first and second kisses. Third time’s the charm and my soulmate  _ will _ be that charm.”

“Okay, but you kissed me first.”

Lara Jean is quiet, unsure how to get him to understand, since he obviously doesn’t care about making sure he’s going to spend all his first with his soulmate. “This is non-negotiable.”

“Fine,” Peter says with a huff. “We need to figure something out, because people are gonna get suspicious if I’m not allowed to touch you.”

He takes her hand in the back pocket suggestion with some grumbling, but otherwise he’s fine with her rules and adds a couple of his own.  _ Fight Club _ is going to be a double feature with  _ Sixteen Candles _ . She has to go to all of his lacrosse games and all the parties that he’s invited to, which doesn’t sound like fun to Lara Jean, but she agrees that they’re things that a girlfriend would do and would look odd if she didn’t do them.

He also gets her to promise to go on the ski-trip with him in December, which she really doesn’t like, but well, this will be long over by then.

(It isn’t.)

* 

They’re sitting in the diner after they leave Gary’s party. 

“My dad,” Peter says, “he, uh, he got his soulmark when I was ten. And my brother was four. He got fired from a job and it was awful and my mom supported us all until he got a new one, and then he gets a new one. Which was great, until the next day he woke up with a star on his ankle. My mom was, um, my mom was pissed that he wanted to leave her just because he had this mark. I mean, they had two kids and a life together and they had always told each other that they didn’t need soulmates, but I guess that’s when my dad didn’t think he’d ever meet his so it was fine to settle for a second rate life. So she convinces him to stay, but then guess what? He actually meets her and it’s great except he has this family, but she’s his soulmate and that’s more important so he leaves while my mom is begging him to stay. Asking how in the world can he possibly think this woman who he meant literally two days ago can love him more than a woman who has known him fifteen years.”

Peter gives a watery laugh, and then continues. “And all he does is just say that she can, because she’s his soulmate, which means she could love him way more than my mother ever could. And I remember my mom just standing there, in the kitchen when he leaves, because he has what he wanted and she doesn’t have anything. And now he has a soulmate and a new kid and all he wants to do is forget about us because we were a mistake. That’s just . . . that’s just how it went. One day I was his son and the next day I was a mistake. So when I got my soulmark and me and Gen were dating. . . . I couldn’t just leave her based on a maybe. I mean, this person to me, who knows what they’re like? They won’t know me like Gen did, so it didn’t seem worth it to tell anyone, not even Gen because I knew how she react. I didn’t even tell my mom, because she told me that my brother and I shouldn’t get involved with anyone who isn’t our soulmate because that’s just asking for trouble later. So I bought a band and I made sure never to take it off, no matter what.”

Lara Jean can’t help but to think a little about her mother and that old boyfriend, and she wonders if that boyfriend maybe wasn’t so in the wrong as her parents had always implied. She shakes the thought from her mind, reaches across the table to hold Peter’s hand in a silent show of support.

They’re cleaning up after dinner with his family and they’re talking about her mother and for the first time in a long time, Lara Jean feels like she finally has someone that understands what exactly she’s saying when she tells him that sometimes she forgets about her mother.

Her father and Chris convince her to go on the ski trip, and then finally, Lucas gets through to her and it leads to them sitting in the hot tub, kissing and at some point in those blissful moments, he brushes his fingers against her mark and it sends an electric jolt through her. She pulls away and takes a deep breath.

“Are you okay?” he mumbles in a daze, a wide smile on his face and she can tell that he can’t believe what just happened either.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “You just brushed against my mark.”

“Really?” he says with a laugh. He looks at the water, and then looks back up at her with those damn puppy dog eyes. “Can I see it?”

“Sure,” she says, not actually sure. The idea of her soulmate, someone that she had totally forgotten about until just a second ago, sends a shot of fear coursing through her body. She wonders what she’ll do if she and Peter are together when she meets him. She wonders what she’ll do when Peter meets his.

She turns her body enough for Peter to get a look at it.

He says nothing, but just softly traces the mark with his finger. “Holy shit,” he whispers reverently.

“What?” she asks, turning back towards him in confusion.

He looks at her with the widest eyes she’s ever seen, and takes off his wristband. She looks down, and her heart almost stops.

It’s a little teal bow.

“I got the mark right after I wrote your letter,” she whispers, wondering how in the world she had managed to miss that connection all these years.

Of course, the letters were the only thing she’s never mentioned to her family, so they didn’t point it out to her.

Holy shit is right.

Without even thinking about it, Lara Jean grabs Peter’s wrist and brings it toward her. She places the lightest kiss on his mark, and she feels him sigh when she does. Her eyes flick towards him, the light surrounding him like a glow and Lara Jean thinks she has never seen a man so beautiful.

She sits up, and then turns around and leans backward, falling against his chest. He wraps his arms around her, and she grips the wrist that has their mark, running her thumb across it again and again. He leans down, places his mouth on hers, and Lara Jean gasps.

How long they stay like that, she doesn’t know.

“My dad,” he whispers at some point. “I still don’t understand how he could leave. I always thought that at some point I would, but I just . . . I don’t.”

“He shouldn’t just love his soulmate at the expense of his,” Lara Jean whispers back. “He shouldn’t have just left you.”

It’s late when they head back to her room, Lucas and Chris magically disappearing, where they fall asleep curled around each other, her thumb still on his mark, his mouth still on hers.

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you like this! I had fun writing it, and you actually got me to watch this movie. :)


End file.
